Chrysler Repair: Interior lights flash randomly on 2000 300M, push button switch, door latch


Question
The interior lights on my 2000 300M (79,000 mileage) flash on and off in spurts. Typically, the lights will flash 3-5 times and then stop. Sometimes this will happen often over a fifteen minute period. Sometimes it only happens once or twice and then stops.

It happens when the car is moving and also when it is parked with the engine running. It does not effect the external lights. It seems to be getting worse over the past few weeks (i.e. more frequent).

Thanks  

Answer
Hi Stan,
Except for the fact that it happens when you aren't moving, I would attribute this to having a door latch adjustment which is too loose and accidentally opens the push-button switch on the door whose purpose is to turn on the courtesy lights. That it does it when at rest, but idling, could still be caused by the same thing, although road flexing usually is required to produce this phenomenon. So check it out by pushing out from the inside on the trim panel of each door to see if you can identify a door that is too loosely latched.
The final possibilities are that the manual interior lamp control switch on the headlamp control switch is flakey, or that there is a breakdown occuring in the body control module where all the inputs from the door push-buttons are observed and then passed on to the courtesy lamps for activation. It has to be one of those explanations. Let me know what you find, please.
Roland